1. Never make of your meditation a mere spiritual reading, still less a study. The meditation is essentially a conversation with God.1. Never make of your meditation a mere spiritual reading, still less a study. The meditation is essentially a conversation with God.
2. Never neglect, on whatever subject you meditate, to make suitable applications to yourself.
3. If the meditation is preceded by a reading, the considerations need not take up much time because they are supposed to have been made already, to some extent at least, during the reading; if that was the case, apply yourself almost immediately to the affections, or, better still, make the considerations in the form of affections.
4. Always give a very large place to the affections. The affections really make of the meditation a mental prayer. Affections of faith, petition, humility, thanksgiving, and love should find a place in every meditation.
5. Make all the resolutions that are suggested by the considerations and affections in the course of the meditation. But toward the end of the meditation, select from among the many, one special resolution, which shall be the resolution properly so called, and give it all the required qualifications.
6. As much as possible, make your meditation in the form of a colloquy (to, rather than about, God and Our Lady). Habitually keep your eyes on the tabernacle and converse familiarly and lovingly with Him who is present therein on purpose for you. Although the entire meditation, even the considerations and resolutions, be made in the form of a colloquy, there should, however, be among the acts of the conclusion, a final colloquy, or the colloquy properly so called, which consists in offering up to God, or to the Blessed Virgin, or to some saint, the resolution for the coming day, and in begging earnestly for the grace of being faithful to it.
7. No one special method is obligatory for meditation. Thus it is not necessary to make all the acts in every meditation, nor to make them in their natural order, namely, the considerations first, then the affections, and finally the resolutions. Be perfectly free in this respect. Consult your dispositions, your needs, the inspirations of grace and the nature of the subject you are meditating upon, and do not adhere too strictly to the method; the method is meant to be a help, not a hindrance.
8. Always aim at what is practical. Be practical in making the considerations by applying to yourself what you are considering; theoretical considerations, however good in themselves, fall short of spiritual profit, unless they are made to enter the sphere of practical life. Be practical in making the affections by giving the preference to such affections as are more in harmony with the state of your soul. Be practical, above all, in the choice of resolutions, because principally upon the resolutions rests the task of realizing the usefulness of meditation.
9. When, through serious indisposition of mind or body, you find yourself incapable of applying yourself to regular meditation, you may rest satisfied with reviewing beforehand the different duties in which you are to be employed during the day, considering how you can best fulfill them in a manner pleasing to God and edifying to others. You may also complain to God, as you would to your spiritual director, of your inability to meditate, of your miseries, which you may enumerate, and of your many failures in the practice of virtue, thus humbling yourself and realizing your own nothingness. If your inability to meditate is so great that you cannot do even this, then at least look respectfully toward the tabernacle and keep on saying in your heart with a sincere conviction of your littleness and a deep sentiment of humility: "My Jesus, mercy!" or some other short aspiration. If you do this you shall have made a good meditation.
- taken from Catechism of Mental Prayer, by Father Joseph Simler